The Watergate was an American political scandal which occurred when Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, was running for reelection against his democratic rival, George Stanley McGovern. During the election, the democratic national headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington DC were broken into and bugs were planted, and it was later revealed that the five burglars had ties not only to the government, but to the White House itself. During this investigation, FBI prosecutors discovered that the Director of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, had helped with the
At the time of his plea, prosecutors said Grass admitted to a series of illegal activities, from backdating contracts and severance letters to misleading the company and federal investigators about a $2.6 million real estate deal. They said he also met with employees called to testify before the grand jury and encouraged them to lie. During Grass' time at the head of the Camp Hill-based company founded by his father, Alex Grass, its stock price soared as Rite Aid engaged in an aggressive expansion effort. But the grand jury said the boom years were accomplished by "massive accounting fraud, the deliberate falsification of financial statements, and intentionally false SEC filings." Less than a year after
The evidence that surfaced was able to link Nikon to destroying key documents to cover-up of the break in as well as uncovering that the Nixon reelection committee had run “dirty schemes and tricks” during the campaign against the Democrats. It also shed light on the administrations illegal wiretapping of phones of “the enemies” or journalists that had been extremely critical of Nixon. Even though Nixon continued to maintain that he was innocent it was later revealed after numerous attempts to obtain the evidence that he secretly taped routine conversations that were had in his office. After the amount of incriminating evidence and the endless wonder about the depth of his involvement on August 8, 1974 during a televised special announcement Richard Nixon gave a one line speech vaguely admitting his involvement and public stepping down from office as President. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford who later pardoned Nixon from his crimes.
(The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The FBI connected the payments to the burglars to a slush fund used by the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President. As evidence mounted against the president's staff, which included former staff members testifying against them in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing that he had attempted to cover up the break-in. After a series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes; he ultimately complied.)
Gravel v. United States 408 U.S. 606 (1972) Facts of the Case Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska was given a copy of the classified “Pentagon Papers” in 1971. After he received the classified documents, he called a meeting of his subcommittee in the Senate and shared their contents with the others in the subcommittee. He also allegedly arranged to publish the documents through Beacon Press. A federal grand jury, in the process of an investigation of possible federal law violations, subpoenaed one of Senator Gravel’s aides. Senator Gravel protested this subpoena arguing that requiring the aide to testify would be a violation of the Speech and Debate clause.
The Watergate Scandal The Watergate Scandal was a very low point in American history dealing with government and its corruption during this time. It started with multiple burglars breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. The scandal occurred from around March of 1971 to September 8, 1974 when then president Gerald Ford gave a full pardon to Richard Nixon for “all offenses against the United States committed between January 20, 1969 and August 9, 1974. (Watergate Chronology/spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk) It began on March 20, 1971 when Fredrick LaRue and Gordon Liddy attended a meeting where the members of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREP) where the members agreed to commit $250,000 to “intelligence gathering” operation against the Democratic Party. Then about one year after the original meeting, John N. Mitchell and Jeb Macgruger talk about the proposal made by Gordon Liddy a year earlier to place a wiretap on the phone of the chairman of the national Democratic Party Larry O’Brien.
All three of these organizations have “valid” reasons for wanted the president dead. The CIA, for one, was frustrated with JFK and possibly took it upon themselves to take care of the problem. * * The CIA was a very secretive organization in the 1960s and very little was known about their operations. However, during that time period, the CIA was widely believed to have carried out many high-profile political assassinations. Seven percent of conspiracy-loving Americans blame the Central Intelligence Agency for Kennedy's death.
Presidential scandals also have made Americans distrust the government. During 1960’s and 1970’s, the Watergate scandal may have caused low external efficacy because not only did the Nixon administration break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, but they also tried to cover it up which means that politicians most likely hide other similar
Institutions Over the past few years, the nation has been temporarily outraged by many different government scandals such as the leak of a CIA agent’s cover by their own government; the firing of United States Attorneys who weren’t blindly loyal to the administration; the suspension of habeas corpus rights, the friendly-fire death and subsequent cover-up of soldier Pat Tillman; the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. That last scandal is in the news again, because the President managed to have the laws changed retroactively, so his once-illegal surveillance program is now the law of the land. The military has covered up many things that have happened in the past to prevent from ruining their reputation and to discourage people from
Vietnam: Effects on America- http://www.glynn.k12.ga.us/BHS/academics/junior/durham/daniels11885/home.html Part 3- Why was the Watergate scandal so important? It was important because, President Richard Nixon got caught with many crime charges. He got elected out of office for many of the crimes. The purpose of this was to explain what Watergate Scandal was, what happened to President Nixon. The original audience of this would have been the publics, from the government.